And in France

And in France

The French election results do not look pretty. There is a second round but the Le Pen’s National Rally have gain 33% of the voters share.

Macron’s strategy, “apres Moi la deluge” is entering its endgame.  Macron’s project was always based on presenting himself as the only bulwark against France’s far-right yet holding the threat of “La France Insoumise” as somehow equally unacceptable. It has always been both an anti-left and a personal vanity project.

Michael Chessum in this article, powerfully argues that right wing populism, fundamentally based upon racism and the dehumanisation of others has been allowed to breed by the neoliberal policies of austerity, the natural consequence of which is the cost of living crisis. The centre’s desire to triangulate is a fatal and dangerous approach. The far-right’s racism must be opposed, and it seems that the British and European left is not up to the task; in the UK for instance Labour’s decision to pull its campaign in Clacton vs Farage and the comments on immigration and returning illegal entrants to Bangladesh underline “changed” Labour’s continued pandering to the racist right.

The Spectator argues that a Le Pen government in alliance with the populist right in Europe, particularly Italy, may well be part of an end game for the EU and Von der Leyen is not the leader to stop this. The Spectator article also suggest that a change of government in France will also make life difficult on defence and trade for what we assume is an incoming Labour government.

Image Credit: NA Paris from flickr CC 2009 elliotbrown BY, w750 cropped …

Europe and Brexit, yesterday & tomorrow

Europe and Brexit, yesterday & tomorrow

I look at the European Parliamentary election results. It wasn’t a good night for Labour last night and but not as good for the Brexit Party as they might have hoped. This article was written mainly on Tuesday and backdated to Monday 27th. It looks at the impact on the European Union, how the earth moved in the UK,  and the dreadful and inept campaigning decisions taken by the Labour Party. It finishes with a brief look at the immediate reactions in the Labour Party not least the twitter spat between Paul Mason and LOTO. For more, see below/overleaf. …

Vote Labour again

Welcome to the Brexit merry-go-round!

I have been reading the news as have you all. Labour’s promised vote seems to be plummeting, in London in 2017, we got 61% and in the Mayoral election, Sadiq Kahn got 41% of first preferences. Polls are suggesting that Labour is on about 24% in London, although they could be wrong.

Labour supporters should vote Labour.

If you are a Remainer, and we win, these MEPs will sit for 5 years holding a Commission accountable.

Labour’s MEPs will be the Party of European Socialists and will pursue the objects of the PES Manifesto, which is largely influenced by Labour’s agenda of anti-austerity economics and social solidarity. Labour MEPs will vote for the Socialist candidate for the position of President of the Commission.

In London our candidates are good people. Claude Moraes has an exemplary record as European Legislator acting as Rapporteur (i.e. author) for the GDPR which redefined the right of Privacy in Europe. He has been Chair of the Civil Liberties committee, Seb Dance is probably best know for the he’s lying stunt but has been campaigning on environmental rights, Katy Clark used to be an MP and was a strong civil rights campaigner and Laura Parker is an articulate socialist who would strengthen Labour’s parliamentary team; she has been part of the team that has led Momentum to its “remain” supporting decision.

We talk of beating Farage; this is not just important in the UK for our own political health but the number of MEPs in the European Parliament matters. Historically Farage has sat independently with allies but apart from the Fascist parties from France & Hungary. These far-right parties are likely to be joined by the Alternative for Deutschland and the Italian hard right. The idea of an alliance of the political right of such size is frightening and all democrats should do their best to oppose these people. i.e. coming first or second matters in the UK.

The alternative for many seems to be the LibDems. If elected, they will sit with the ALDE group led by Guy Verhofstadt, who has been the European Parliament’s Brexit co-ordinator; he has given up partly because he feels that ALDE will be more powerful without a strong Labour delegation. The British LibDems are no longer part of a British progressive alliance and ALDE cannot be trusted to fight the far-right.

  …

Labour & Digital

Trefor Davies of trefor.net commissioned and published an article by me on the state of the politics of digital and its likely impact on the General Election. In the article I classify the issues around citizenship and economics. Obviously the manifesto has not been published and so prediction of its content is not easy. Regular readers will know that I am a supporter of both the Open Rights Group and Privacy International. I have also served on NESSI, the EU’s internet/I.T. R&D project incubator.  I am hopeful on the issues of citizenship, unsure on copyright and intellectual property laws and expect a good offer on digital government. …

Sort orders and Strasbourg

Sort orders and Strasbourg

I thought I’d share some more thoughts on the European Pariament Election results. The article looks at some sort order silliness on the London ballot paper and then looks at the success or otherwise of the European People’s Party and the gains and losses in the European Parliament by euro-party. In London, the Liberal Democrats came 5th, failing to win a seat, but next after them was a party called 4Freedoms. This was the first on the ballot paper. It was in fact the slate of the European People’s Party, a role once held by the Tories but Cameron had the Tories walk out of the EPP, thus denying them the opportunity to win votes in the UK and denying them another 20 seats on top of their No. 1 spot; they won 214 seats. This may become important as the European Parliament votes and elects its leadership. The reason for putting themselves on the ballot paper is twofold, one, some expatriate Europeans may prefer to vote for a Christian Democrat slate rather than the Tories and it gave their lead candidate, Jean Claude Juncker the opportunity to collect votes, if not seats. …

And the results are in

And the results are in

Due to the delay in the count at Tower Hamlets, I didn’t get the London results for the European Parliament until the following morning. Labour have four out of eight seats in London. In 2012, after the London Mayoral’s I had hoped that Labour would get four seats, but had come to assume this was beyond us. Obviously not, Labour’s 36% gave it four seats, the Tories two and one each for UKIP and the Greens. The LibDems losing their one seat. Labour won the 1st, 3rd, 5th and 7th seats. …

It’s looking good in London

It’s looking good in London

So while we now have some solid data about how people will vote in the European elections i.e. how they voted in their locals, amassing this data into regions is a lot of work. Even the London Councils site is only reporting seats which is not helpful for predicting a proportional counting system. A number of sources have commented that London has rejected UKIP and that my last predictions were based on them getting 21% of the London vote. Both the elections and newspapers poll reporting suggests that the UKIP vote will be lower than that. The papers are also underplaying the size of the Labour council victory. I think London is going to be better than I predicted. …

A digital manifesto for Europe

A digital manifesto for Europe

Perhaps it really is the day we fight back, since the EDRi, the European umbrella digital liberty organisation has over the last couiple of days just launched its manifesto for the European Parliament elections. They have published their manifesto on a pseudo trading site where voters and politicians can pledge their votes and promises in public around the EDRi’s charter which consists of the following 10 points. …